Gagarin Coin

My man Yuri Gagarin gets another Russian coin from the Russian Central Bank in honor of the flight’s 50th anniversary last April. He remains one of the few official Soviet heroes to merit being put on a post-Soviet piece of Russian currency. As I tell my students, if you want to know what people consider important, look at what they put on their money.

I have recently read a transcript of a radio program about the coin celebrating 350th anniversary of Irkutsk featuring Elizabeth II on the obverse, because it was minted in Niue. The same mint did the Anniversary Gagarin coin featuring Alexei Leonov’s artwork (and the portrait of Elizabeth II on the obverse, too). http://www.nzmint.com/coins/shop-online/conquest-space-–-first-man-space